[Peace-discuss] Bush's greatest ally: ignorance

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

Three of Four Bush Supporters Still Believe in Iraqi WMD, al 
Qaeda Ties
by Jim Lobe
 

WASHINGTON – Three out of four self-described supporters of 
President George W. Bush still believe that pre-war Iraq had 
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programs to 
produce them and that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein 
provided “substantial support” to al Qaeda, according to a 
new survey released here Thursday.

Moreover, as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs 
today than they did several months ago, before the 
publication of a series of well-publicized official 
government reports that debunked both notions.

Those are among the most striking findings of the survey, 
which was conducted in mid-October by the University of 
Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) 
and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm.


Remarkably, asked whether the U.S. should have gone to war 
with Iraq if U.S. intelligence had concluded that Baghdad did 
not have a WMD program and was not providing support to al 
Qaeda, 58 percent of Bush supporters said no, and 61 percent 
said they assumed that Bush would also not have gone to war 
under those circumstances.

The survey, which polled the views of nearly 900 randomly 
chosen respondents equally divided between Bush supporters 
and those intending to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, 
found a yawning gap in the world views, particularly as 
regards pre-war Iraq, between the two groups.

“It is normal during elections for supporters of presidential 
candidates to have fundamental disagreements about values or 
strategies,” according to an analysis produced by PIPA. “The 
current election is unique in that Bush supporters and Kerry 
supporters have profoundly different perceptions of reality. 
In the face of a stream of high-level assessments about pre-
war Iraq, Bush supporters cling to the refuted beliefs that 
Iraq had WMD or supported al Qaeda.”

Indeed, the only issue on which the survey found broad 
agreement between the two sets of voters was on the question 
of whether the Bush administration itself has been actively 
propagating the misconceptions about Iraq’s WMD and 
connections to al Qaeda.

“One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these 
(erroneous) beliefs is that they perceive the Bush 
administration confirming them,” noted Steven Kull, PIPA’s 
director. “Interestingly, this is one point on which Bush and 
Kerry supporters agree.”

The survey also found a major gap between Bush’s stated 
positions on a number of international issues and what his 
supporters believe Bush’s position to be. A strong majority 
of Bush supporters believe, for example that the president 
supports a range of international treaties and institutions 
which is actually on record as opposing.

On pre-war Iraq, the survey asked each respondent questions 
about WMD and links to al Qaeda on three levels: 1) what the 
respondents themselves believed about the two issues; (2) 
what they believed that “most experts” had concluded about 
them; and 3) what they believed the Bush administration was 
saying about them.

The survey found that 72 percent of Bush supporters believe 
either that Iraq had actual WMD (47 percent) or a major 
program for producing them (25 percent), despite the 
widespread media coverage in early October of the Central 
Intelligence Agency (CIA’s) “Duelfer Report,” the final word 
on the subject by the one billion dollar, 15-month 
investigation by the Iraq Survey Group.

It found that that Hussein had dismantled all of his WMD 
programs shortly after the 1991 Gulf War and had never tried 
to reconstitute them.

Nonetheless, 56 percent of Bush supporters said they believed 
that most experts currently believe that Iraq had actual WMD, 
and 57 percent said they thought that the Duelfer Report had 
itself concluded that Iraq either had WMD (19 percent) or a 
major WMD program (38 percent).

Only 26 percent of Kerry supporters, by contrast, said they 
believed that pre-war Iraq had either actual WMD or a WMD 
program, and only 18 percent said they believed that “most 
experts” agreed.

Similar results were found with respect to Hussein’s alleged 
support for al Qaeda, a theory that has been most 
persistently asserted by Vice president Dick Cheney, but that 
was thoroughly debunked by the final report of the bipartisan 
9/11 Commission earlier this summer.

Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters said they believed 
that Iraq was providing “substantial” support to Al Qaeda, 
with 20 percent asserting that Iraq was directly involved in 
the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Sixty-three 
percent of Bush supporters even believed that the clear 
evidence of such support has actually been found, and 60 
percent believe that “most experts” have reached the same 
conclusion.

By contrast, only 30 percent of Kerry supporters said they 
believe that such a link existed and that most experts agree.

But large majorities of both Bush and Kerry supporters agree 
that the administration is saying that Iraq had WMD and was 
providing substantial support to al Qaeda. In regard to WMD, 
those majorities have actually grown since last summer, 
according to PIPA.

On WMD, 82 percent of Bush supporters and 84 percent of Kerry 
supporters believed that the administration is saying that 
Iraq either had WMD or major WMD programs. On ties with al 
Qaeda, 75 percent of Bush supporters and 74 percent of Kerry 
supporters believe that the administration is saying that 
Iraq provided substantial support to the terrorist group.

Remarkably, asked whether the U.S. should have gone to war 
with Iraq if U.S. intelligence had concluded that Baghdad did 
not have a WMD program and was not providing support to al 
Qaeda, 58 percent of Bush supporters said no, and 61 percent 
said they assumed that Bush would also not have gone to war 
under those circumstances.

“To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. 
to war based on mistaken assumptions,” said Kull, “likely 
creates substantial cognitive dissonance and leads Bush 
supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information 
about pre-war Iraq.”

Kull added that this “cognitive dissonance” could also help 
explain other remarkable findings in the survey, particularly 
with respect to Bush supporters’ misperceptions about the 
president’s own positions.

In particular, majorities or Bush supporters incorrectly 
assumed that he supports multilateral approaches to various 
international issues, including the Comprehensive Nuclear 
Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) (69 percent), the land mine treaty (72 
percent), and the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas 
emissions that contribute to global warming (51 percent).

In August, two thirds of Bush supporters also said they 
believed that Bush supported the International Criminal Court 
(ICC), although in the latest poll, that figure dropped to a 
53 percent majority, even though Bush explicitly denounced 
the ICC in the most widely watched nationally televised 
debate of the campaign in late September.

In all of these cases, majorities of Bush supporters said 
they favored the positions that they imputed, incorrectly, to 
Bush.

Large majorities of Kerry supporters, on the other hand, 
showed they knew both their candidate’s and Bush’s positions 
on the same issues.

Bush supporters were also found to hold misperceptions 
regarding international support for the president and his 
policies.

Despite a steady flow over the past year of official 
statements by foreign governments and public-opinion polls 
showing strong opposition to the Iraq war, less than one 
third of Bush supporters believed that most people in foreign 
countries opposed the U.S. having gone to war.

Two thirds said they believed that foreign views were either 
evenly divided on the war (42 percent) or that the majority 
of foreigners actually favored the war (26 percent).

Three of every four Kerry supporters, on the other hand, said 
it was their understanding that the most of the rest of the 
world opposed the war.

Similarly, polls conducted during the summer in 35 major 
countries around the world found that majorities or 
pluralities in 30 of them favored Kerry for president over 
Bush by an average of margin of greater than two to one.

Yet 57 percent of Bush supporters said they believed a 
majority of people outside the U.S. favored Bush re-election, 
and 33 percent said foreign opinion was evenly divided.

Two thirds of Kerry supporters said they though their 
candidate was favored overseas; only one percent said they 
though most people abroad preferred Bush.

Kull, who has been analyzing U.S. public opinion on foreign-
policy issues for two decades, said misperceptions of Bush 
supporters showed, if anything, that hold that the president 
has over his loyalists.

“The roots of the Bush supporters’ resistance to information 
very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and 
equally into the near pitch-perfect leadership that President 
Bush showed in its immediate wake,” he said.

“This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush 
and his supporters – and an idealized image of the President 
that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he 
could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that 
world public opinion would be critical of his policies or 
that the president could hold foreign-policy positions that 
are at odds with his supporters.” 
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-344-5812
homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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